THE WAKKER WEEKLY - Issue #1254 - Posted on: 09-Feb-2015

Bushwakker News

Our premium wine specials for February are from BC’s Wayne Gretzky Okanagan Wines. The red is The Great Red VQA (merlot, malbec, cabernet, cabernet franc, syrah, petit verdot, mouvedre, gamay noir). The white is The Great White VQA (sauvignon blanc, riesling, pinot grigio, chardonnay, semillon), $8.95 for a glass and $24.95 for a half litre.

Our guest tap now pours the Robust Porter from Black Bridge Brewery in Swift Current for $7.95 a pint. Next up is the Mikkeller Monk’s Elixir Quadruple from Belgium.

Scotties Tournament of Hearts Tickets

The 2015 Scotties Tournament of Hearts Canadian Women’s Curling Championship is coming to Saskatchewan this month. The Bushwakker and Pepsico Canada present a contest in which you have a chance to win one of three pairs of tickets to Draw #5 which will take place on Sunday, February 15 at 7:00 PM. Watch the Bushwakker Facebook Page this coming Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for our Scotties Curling Contest Question. The first person to answer the question correctly wins a pair of tickets. The winner of the Thursday curling question will also win a pair of VIP passes to the sponsor lounge. Good luck!

Bushwakker Events

Feb. 6: First Firkin Friday. Men in kilts, a piper from The Regina Police Pipes & Drums, a procession throughout the brewpub, involving a small keg, an unsuspecting volunteer keg tapper, possibly a beer-soaked spectacle and 41 litres of special beer created for the occasion. A great longstanding Bushwakker tradition. 5:30 PM.

Feb. 26: Last Mountain Distillery Seminar & Tasting. The production of craft breweries is growing in our province. This trend is echoed by the micro-distilleries. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience a virtual tour of the Last Mountain Distillery in Lumsden, Saskatchewan with distillery owners, Colin and Meredith Schmidt. Enjoy a sampling of six unique products as well as sample cuts of the distillate right out of the still from every stage of the manufacturing process. 50 tickets will be made available. Only $20 each.

Budweiser steps in it!

Too bad the Superbowl adds weren’t seen in Canada. Budweiser, as a major sponsor, had three adds. One nondescript add involved a maze. One played on the puppies and Clydesdale theme with four Clydesdales saving a puppy from a wolf. The third has generated a social media storm and dozens of news stories. The add implied that craft beer drinkers are a somewhat effete bunch of posers. The criticism is best summarized by the following article.

I have set foot in the Budweiser Research Pilot Brewery. I have met the talented, kind, passionate people who work there. I’ve written about the place as objectively as I could. But as a craft beer supporter, I can’t stand by when the company airs a commercial like they did during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast.

Never has the oh-so-popular internet adage of “SHOTS FIRED” been so applicable as it was when Anheuser unveiled a new, third-quarter Budweiser ad titled “Brewed the Hard Way.” Over the course of a minute, we learn that the brand is embracing its “macro” title and doesn’t feel at all threatened by craft brewers and their flavorful, unique products as those craft beers continue a decade-long surge in popularity and relevance. In fact, Anheuser is so non-threatened by craft beer that it saw fit to spend $9 million on a 60-second Super Bowl add just to make sure you were aware of that fact. Because that’s what a company does when it’s definitely not being threatened. View the ad below before we continue:

Budweiser is “proudly a macro beer”This is like that “reclaiming” of a negative word thing we’ve heard about before, yes? “Macro” being the opposite of “micro,” the term that was once applied to what are now typically referred to as craft brewers. But yeah, they’re proud to be big, because big obviously correlates to “best.” After all, McDonald’s makes the highest quality hamburgers in the world, right?

It’s not “brewed to be fussed over”You know that the mustachioed hipster in this shot isn’t drinking a Bud, because a. It’s not yellow, and b. He wants to smell it, and that would be pointless with a Bud. I find myself wondering about the casting for this ad. “Wanted: People willing to visually resemble the segment of society we don’t understand and don’t want as customers. For pay!”

“This is the only beer Beechwood Aged”“Alright guys, hear me out. So, what if right after we say it’s not to be fussed over, we IMMEDIATELY trumpet the fact that it’s beechwood aged, something that roughly 1% of our target demographic understands? It’ll be great, and not sound fussy at all.”

“It’s brewed for drinking, not dissecting”“Please, if at all possible, try not to taste our beer. If you’re able to disable your gag reflex and just pour it straight down your gullet and into your stomach in one fell swoop while bypassing the taste buds altogether, that would be ideal.”

“The people who drink our beer are people who like to drink beer brewed the hard way.”The average Budweiser drinker clearly appreciates beer made “the hard way.” The hard way, as it turns out, is being bought out by a Belgian brewing conglomerate, gutting American jobs and leveraging the full lobbying and marketing power of an international business goliath. “The hard way” is definitely not starting a small business that brews experimental beer to compete with those giants. There’s nothing hard about the latter. Craft beer is easy, didn’t you know that? Maybe that’s why craft beer’s sales numbers continue to surge every year, because it’s just so easy.

“Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale, we’ll be brewing us some golden suds.”Only losers drink pumpkin peach ale. Everyone knows this. Except, wait, what’s that? Elysian Brewing, the Seattle brewery that Anheuser just purchased last week, makes a … yes … pumpkin peach ale. It’s called “Gourdia on My Mind .” Anheuser is literally mocking the consumers of the COMPANIES THEY NOW OWN. Honestly, how devastating is that for the Elysian brewing team? Your owners think your customers are pretentious hipsters. These are the people who own your business. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn that Twitter handles of employees like @ElysianMatt have already been deleted after they informed the public that employees weren’t even informed of the acquisition before it was announced online.

And moreover, how stupid does Anheuser think the average viewer is? The effectiveness of anything in this commercial is almost entirely dependent upon the consumer’s ignorance—they’re praying you’re too stupid to realize that it’s all BS.

That’s all. In a Super Bowl where even the Bud Light commercials could be laid-back and fun (I actually enjoyed the human Pac Man set-up), it was a shame to spend the third quarter watching the craft beer community react en masse to an unprecedented attack from Big Beer.

What’s more, they won’t even own up to their own attack. Already, there have been pieces published with company executives explaining that this is definitely not an attack on craft beer. As Brian Perkins, VP of Marketing for Budweiser states in that piece, this ad isn’t intended to skewer craft beer at all, despite the obvious, stereotyped characters of mustachioed hipsters sniffing flights of craft beer. Instead, he says AB “acquires and sells craft beer. We love craft beer. This is an affirmation of what Budweiser is, not an attack on what it isn’t.” Note that in another piece, he refers to the earlier-mentioned “pumpkin peach” beer as “a fabricated, ludicrous flavor combination,” apparently blissfully unaware that his company was in the process of buying a brewery that made EXACTLY THAT PRODUCT. We’re at Irony Defcon 1, people.

The actual intention of his quotes are to defuse a little tension, if possible. There’s only one group of people who would ever conceivably end up reading those posts on the internet, and that’s angry craft beer drinkers. Budweiser consumers will simply see the ad’s obvious message: “Craft beer is for pretentious fools, Budweiser is for real people” and presumably let confirmation bias do the rest of the work. Meanwhile, the company can simultaneously deny the surface message of their own content in an effort to placate at least a portion of the people pissed off by the ad. It won’t work, but there’s no reason for them not to try. They don’t have to worry about the two segments crossing, because by and large they won’t. Once again, it’s a strategy that hinges entirely on the ignorance of their core consumers.

Ed. Note. Some clarification is needed. First, in addition to Elysian Brewing, Budweiser also owns Goose Island Brewing which makes a Complex Pumpkin Ale. Next, the word “Craft” has not replaced “Microbrewery” as the writer says. The world of craft beer has always and still includes microbreweries, which are mainly wholesale, such as Rebellion, and brewpubs, which are mainly retail, such as the Bushwakker. The article itself assumes that these words are well known. They are not and even the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority apparently hasn’t figured out what they mean as shown by the way they parse their press releases to hide their ignorance.

The add helps to make the customer more aware of these words and the many styles of beer that they define.

Based on the availability of craft beer in restaurants, they would seem to be better known in the vicinity of our home in the Phoenix area than in Regina, but pockets of resistance remain.

We recently found an excellent Italian restaurant in the southeast corner of Mesa. I asked our server which craft beers were available. A weird conversation ensued because the server though that I had a speech impediment and was trying to say “draft” beer. You can see my recreation of the dialog in my TripAdvisor review of the Baci Italian Bistro in Mesa AZ. As a result of this failure of communication I started using “microbrewery beer” in later customer-server dialogs.

We then returned to Baci a few weeks later, because otherwise it was an excellent restaurant. I asked for their list of microbrewery beers. The server, a different one, was stuck. She then asked “Is that sort of like craft beer?”

I assume that my TripAdvisor review had been read by Baci management and passed on to the staff.

Our February artist is Joanne Corbett. Her statement follows.

I have been interested in art since I was a child. Since I was getting ready to retire I thought I would pursue my life-long passion more vigorously. So for the past 7 or 8 years I have been painting in acrylic, drawing in charcoal , pastel and pencil and ink.. My favourite is Acrylic.

I do not have a preference as to what might work on. It depends on what takes my fancy.

Time Out; it’s the lawyer’s turn again.

One afternoon, a wealthy lawyer was riding in the back of his limousine when he saw two men eating grass by the road side. He ordered his driver to stop and he got out to investigate.

"Why are you eating grass?" he asked one man.

"We don't have any money for food." the poor man replied.

"Oh, come along with me then."

"But sir, I have a wife with two children!"

"Bring them along! And you, come with us too!", he said to the other man.

"But sir, I have a wife with six children!" the second man answered.

"Bring them as well!"

They all climbed into the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limo. Once underway, one of the poor fellows says, "Sir, you are too kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you."

The lawyer replied, "No problem, the grass at my home is about two feet tall!"

A defendant was on trial for murder in Oklahoma. There was strong evidence indicating guilt, but there was no corpse.

In the defense’s closing statement the lawyer, knowing that his client would probably be convicted, resorted to a trick.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all," the lawyer said as he looked at his watch. "Within one minute, the person presumed dead in this case will walk into this courtroom."

He looked toward the courtroom door. The jurors, somewhat stunned, all looked on eagerly. A minute passed. Nothing happened.

Finally the lawyer said, "Actually, I made up the previous statement. But you all looked on with anticipation. I, therefore, put it to you that there is reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was killed and insist that you return a verdict of not guilty."

The jury, clearly confused, retired to deliberate. A few minutes later, the jury returned and pronounced a verdict of guilty.

"But how?" inquired the lawyer. "You must have had some doubt; I saw all of you stare at the door."

Answered the jury foreman: "Oh, we did look. But your client didn’t."

A Russian, a Cuban, an American and a Lawyer are in a train. The Russian takes a bottle of the Best Vodka out of his pack; pours some into a glass, drinks it, and says: "In USSR, we have the best vodka of the world, nowhere in the world you can find Vodka as good as the one we produce in Volgograd. And we have so much of it, that we can just throw it away..." Saying that, he opens the window and throws the rest of the bottle through it. All the others are quite impressed.

The Cuban takes out a pack of Cohibas, takes one of them, lights it and begins to smoke it saying: "In Cuba, we have the best cigars of the world: Cohibas. Nowhere in the world there is so many and so good cigars and we have so much of them, that we can just throw them away...". Saying that, he throws the pack of Cohibas thru the window. One more time, everybody is quite impressed.

At this time, the American just stands up, opens the window, and throws the Lawyer through it...